Online Collaboration Alternatives To Sharepoint For Small Businesses to Increase Productivity

If you want to run business in today's competitive economy, then you need to gain more flexibility, enhanced information exchange and collaborative teamwork. Well, this shows the importance of collaborative technology.

Today, Microsoft SharePoint is the most prominent solution for collaboration. It is an on-premise collaborative software model, but is more suited to big businesses with huge IT budgets and large number of employees. Microsoft Share-point also has some disadvantages like huge setup costs, no email functionality, software complexities, and costly training and support issues.

But, the SAAS (software-as-a-service) approach gives small businesses a viable alternative to access this software over the Internet at reasonable fees. Here are some packages that could offer valuable productivity gains for small businesses that host websites on 100TB servers:

1. HyperOffice: It is an alternative solution for the small businesses moving from on-premise software such as Microsoft SharePoint to the cloud. Small Businesses need only a broadband connection to access this robust software solution at low costs. Some other benefits includes HyperOffice  has that lack in SharePoint include email functionality, drag and drop portal publisher, an interactive Gantt chart in place of the static Gantt chart in SharePoint and forums.

2. Box.com: This is one of the best Business collaboration software alternative offers a scalable, affordable and simple alternative. Box.com provides small businesses with features such as file storage, file collaboration and content management on the cloud. Also, it is simple to synchronize your files on the desktop, receive feedback at a nominal price and share them with colleagues.

3. Huddle: This alternative is one of the best cloud collaboration tools. It is designed with ease and efficiency in mind, and thousands are using it for enterprise collaboration and content management. Small businesses can easily manage and exchange information or projects with others using Huddle. It also allows you to track project deadlines, view late projects, milestones, completed tasks and even reassign projects, thus making collaboration easy and efficient.

4. Google Apps: This is a free alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. Google Apps offers simplicity, efficiency and clarity, allowing small businesses to organize the day-to-day schedules, files, projects and teams securely. Some other features offered include easy navigation, advanced searches, email integration and free conference calls.

So, these were the four alternatives to Microsoft Sharepoint that small businesses can use and increase their productivity.

5 Steps to Cross Organizational Collaboration and Teamwork

Teamwork and collaboration make an important contribution to the success of business initiatives.  To create effective teamwork, you need to break down any departmental barriers to collaboration so that you can draw on the best people. Set clear objectives and define working relationships so that members can work as a cohesive team.

Here are the five Steps to cross organizational collaboration and Teamwork:

Overcome barriers: One among the major barriers to effective collaboration is the conflicting needs and priorities of the team and the individual departments in your company. All department managers have their own targets to meet and may be reluctant to release key staff for external projects. So, you need to convince departmental heads of the importance and benefits of the team project and persuade them to cooperate.

Agree Direction: Project teams need a clear sense of direction to turn members into a team. You can encourage shared ownership by asking team members to agree the key objectives and define the benefits to the organization.

Recruit Members: Cross-functional teams bring together people with the skills and experience to deal with all aspects of a project. Ask your human resources department to maintain an up-to-date skills profile to find the right people. The profile should include personal skills, important achievements, work experience and involvement in other team projects.

Clarify Responsibilities: A balanced team includes all the skills your team needs to complete its work at different stages of the project. For example, projects like new product development will require different contributions at each stage.  So, it is important for each member to understand their role and responsibility at each stage.

Support Collaboration: Your team will work more effectively if it has the tools to support easy collaboration, like email and instant messaging simplifies communication between members and makes it easy to share documents, project updates and other essential information. Also, accessing information from a single source helps to eliminate the risk of duplication or working on out-of-date information.

Why we need to Improve Business Collaboration?

The term collaboration is much more than a technical architecture, product or solution. It is the experience that integrates processes, technology and people. It is believed that by working collectively, people can achieve extraordinary things.

An organizational chart may show hierarchy, but it does not show real business collaboration, i.e. how people actually interact outside, inside and across the organization. Therefore, to find ways to improve the connections between people and the information they need to share, is important for improving business.

Empower, Engage and Innovate

The goal of collaboration technology is to help people share as naturally as possible. But, how you get there?

• Empower people to work their way i.e. when, where and how they want to work, without any limits.

• Provide the best collaboration tools to engage people to connect with peers and other organizations.

• Innovate people to develop ideas and solve problems.

New Collaborative Environment

Opportunities comes from the combination of technology and people. The collaborative environment gives people the flexibility to be where they need, to do the best work.

A company must use an architectural approach, integrating mobility, and cloud to bring people together anywhere, anytime and on any device. Connect your company's employees, suppliers and customers to make decisions, address supply-chain challenges, or resolve customer issues. The architecture cost-effectively supports security, scalability and accessibility.

So, implement collaboration solutions to:

• Simplify work flow, save time and increase workforce interaction and productivity.

• Flatten organizational hierarchy and better communicate with all levels.

• Increase customer responsiveness by providing faster access to experts and information.

• Make trust and understanding across time zones and within teams through video communications.

Along with productivity improvements, these Business collaboration solutions can help you reduce real-estate costs, travel and greenhouse gas emissions by supporting virtual meetings and telecommuting. Increase your Productivity with Collaboration Softwares.

Re-valuate Workplace Collaboration to Get Your Work Done Anytime Anywhere

The work from home movement has been rapidly increasing day by day, but lately we have been seeing more employers allowing employees to work across multiple Internet-connected areas located on-premise for e.g. conference room, thus removing the ball and chain feeling that comes with the cubicle.

There are many benefits of having employees working together in office, from increased team morale to immediate communication. However, for those employers that are not yet comfortable letting their employees working from home, this approach allows them to strike the perfect balance of productivity, work agility and IT security.

Some professionals said that some employees may want to work in-office but don’t want to be tethered to a desk for hours. Moreover, the communication tools that are now at their disposal, for example mobile phones, integrated solutions like social and chat applications make it more than possible for them to work anywhere and anytime.

“I know I don’t want data and documents to only be accessible on a Windows machine that lives in office,” said Esna CEO and CTO Nezarati. “When you go to Google’s offices, sometimes employees are working from their desks but they may also be working from a desk chair outside getting some fresh air or in a meeting room all this happen with collaboration of Network. Today, it’s all about taking your work with you on any device, anywhere.”

Near about 60 percent of full-time workers recently surveyed said that they partake in some form of bring your own device (BYOD). But 80 percent said that they believe the constant connectivity afforded by work applications empowers them to do their jobs better. But also, the work environment depends on the age of the employees. Those older in age, wants to work from home because they have families.

Overall, the short answer is that the cubicle setting will never disappear completely. But things are changing, specially in leading brands like Google and Facebook that will continue to blaze the trail for employers who are more seriously considering the benefits of unconventional and creative workspaces.
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